Do you remember when you used to play games with your family or friends? Wasn’t it just a great time? Monopoly, scrabble, candyland, Cluedo, snake and ladders, operation (also known as Dr Maboul in French) … What happened? Why did we stopped playing?
Our society has changed and I guess that we prefer watching series, playing games on our phones, chatting on Facebook and so on. If you went at a friend’s house and if he’d ask you: “Do you want to play Monopoly?” wouldn’t you be surprised? Children are not even playing games anymore. It has to stop! I learnt so much from these games. I learnt how to be careful and how to come up with strategies, I learnt that being good is not enough you also need Luck, I learnt that you cannot get angry if you lose, failure is just the first step to success in many cases. I took morality lessons especially playing snake and ladders, where a player’s progression up the board represented a life journey complicated by virtues (ladders) and vices (snakes).
Games … We still play them. In fact, we play them everyday. With our colleagues, siblings, lovers. We have to admit that it’s difficult to live thinking that everyone is playing. How do we play? I guess we just roll the dice to see what comes next, we step into something and deeply believe in it. We try and try again until it works or, … it doesn’t. We let go, we come back we feel trapped and we wait for our turn. We wait a long period of time, we pretend, until someone else loses. Are we bad people? No, we are just human beings, we expect and we fight.
When NYC was in the dark, some friends of mine told me that they played games to pass the time. Turns out they had a great time! However, will they play again? Will they get together to play, share,fight, laugh and learn like old time?
I truly believe we should get our youth back and start playing these games. Throw Games parties with friends and have a blast. In order for it to happen, just think about easy holiday gifts that you could give or receive such as Cluedo, Monopoly and every other game we played that are etch forever in our memories.
I thank my sister and Isabelle for these cherished moments.
MonPetitLA 